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11/7/04 Framing the Debate I: What is a "Human Being"? Human rights. Being a fan of them is a prerequisite for being considered worthy of the term "civilized" (if you're not a fan of human rights, you're certain to be called an "insurgent" or a "terrorist"). But there's no definition anywhere, so how do you know that what you are rooting on are human rights, or something else? There's not much open dispute about what the rights are (there are differences which will be fodder for other debates): Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness, and a lot of specific things that fall into one or more of those categories. But there is great dispute about the definition of a human being. The ground on which the battle is being fought is in the womb and in the petri dish. Liberals are trying to set the terms of the debate so that none of the questions conservatives might raise will have to be answered. Abortion rights, as Thomas L. Friedman has recently framed the moral issue in The New York Times, "[allow] a woman to have control over her body". I can't win an argument that begins "women don't have the right to control their bodies because..." But I need not start the argument from their ground. There is a false premise inherent in Friedman's statement implying that abortion involves only the woman's body. It denies the existence of another human being, or relegates its importance to the marginal status of a parasite: it lives at the whim of the host. But the human embryo or fetus is no ordinary parasite. Its relationship to the mother's body is codified in the very process of mammalian reproduction. We are not reptiles or birds, created inside a membrane with all the nutritional needs of our development provided for us ahead of time. We exist in symbiosis with our mothers throughout our gestation, until our organs have developed to the point where we can exist independently. Or we separate prematurely and face almost certain death. Biologically, everything distinctive about a woman exists to create and sustain this symbiosis, and everything distinctive about a man exists to help set the process in motion. So when Ellen Goodman laments, in her recent column in the Boston Globe, the fact that some people cannot be dissuaded from thinking "that a fertilized egg is a human being", it is fair to ask what she proposes we regard it to be. It is certainly not non-human. It certainly has an existence, so it is hard to imagine that it is not a being. But to give my opposition her due, I will admit that it is not everything that we usually mean when we say "human being." It does not have a personality, but it does have all the blueprints needed to become a unique, fully-developed, human being with unique fingerprints, unique experiences, and unique contributions or deficits to introduce to the spectrum of humanity. As such it is more of a human being than a dead body, since that body will never have a personality again, but can only trigger memories of the personality that once animated it. But we respect that dead body far more than we respect the fertilized egg or "a frozen embryo in a fertility clinic", since that inanimate body cannot be used for scientific experiments or its organs used to benefit children with diabetes or anyone else unless we have the explicit permission both of the deceased and his or her family. I would think the very least the Goodman's and Friedman's of the world owe those of us who think we should assume the fertilized egg has some human rights is an argument that it does not. I have yet to see an argument that an embryo is not a human being (I have seen it claimed, never argued). I have yet to see an argument that, if it is a human being, it has no rights that would protect it against being used without its own consent for the benefit of others. Using human beings without their consent for the benefit of others is slavery. So unless someone can make an argument that destroying embryos in test tubes is not using human beings without their consent for the benefit of others, I think it is both unethical and immoral to continue the practice. Killing human beings who pose no identifiable threat to the life or liberty of other human beings is murder. So unless someone can make an argument that severing the life support of a developing human being whose continued gestation poses no more threat to the life or health of the mother than any normal pregnancy is not murder, I think it is both unethical and immoral to continue the practice. So the challenge is simple. You can win this argument, Ellen Goodman and Thomas Friedman, and claim the high moral ground. All you have to do is prove one of the following: 1) neither a fertilized human egg, nor a human embryo frozen in a fertility clinic, nor an embryo implanted in the human uterus, is a human being; or 2) not all human beings are entitled to protection against being killed without the justification of individual or collective self-defense, or against being used for the benefit of other human beings without their consent. Either argument will open up a whole spectrum of other problems that will have to be solved: 1) what is it that qualifies a being as a human being? and 2) which human beings do have these rights, and which do not? The debate is not about whether a woman controls her body or whether a child with diabetes is entitled to help. The question is whether human beings, or those things which may be human beings when certain other conditions have been met, shall be forced to die to serve the interests of a woman who has not practiced control over her body, or a child with diabetes. Those questions are much harder to answer. No one who tries to avoid answering them can claim the high moral ground in any debate on the subject. Modified: 11/19/2004 |
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